The Seven Rules for Dealing with Autocrats and Their Enablers

We can’t pretend we’re immune to autocratic forces. We aren’t. But we can prepare, we can organize, and we can win.

By Trygve Olson

Over the past two decades, I’ve worked alongside pro-democracy leaders in more than 40 countries, from Serbia to Zimbabwe, Belarus to Venezuela. In those places, the threats were often more violent, the repression more overt. But the tactics of the autocrats — and the resolve of the people fighting back — always echoed the same patterns.

The Seven Rules I’m sharing here weren’t written at a desk. They were formed in real-time, on the ground, shoulder-to-shoulder with those risking everything to resist authoritarianism. And now, with democracy under attack here in the United States, these rules aren’t just useful — they’re urgent.

We can’t pretend we’re immune to the same autocratic forces. We aren’t. But we can prepare, we can organize, and we can win. These rules are your toolkit. They’ve helped take down dictators. They’ve given hope to those in fear. And if we take them seriously, they can do the same for us.

Rule #1: Play the Game You Are in, Not the One You Wish or Want to Play.
This means when one side is playing the zero-sum, illiberal game, there is no win-win to be played. You will either win, and democracy survives, or you lose to the autocratic forces.

Rule #2: Always Speak Truth to Power Because You Never Know the Tipping Point.
You must confront the Big Lies of illiberal forces by speaking truth to their base of power — the people. There is a tipping point where your Truth or the Big Lies prevail.

Rule #3: Don't Hand the Autocrats Battering Rams with Which to Beat You.
The game you are in, the battle you are fighting, isn't about policy or ideology. They will use what you say to divide you from your allies, who you need to win the battle for democracy.

Rule #4: Understand Authoritarians Must Live in a Truth-Free Present.
The past presents truths about the big lies and fear the illiberal forces use. The future for autocratic forces only matters for maintaining power at the moment. They only care about keeping/gaining power.

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Rule #5: Practice Zero-Sum Judo.
Use their tactics against them. Big Truths, Marginalization, making them dependent, mocking disinformation, and dividing and conquering their power structure. Use their desire for the legitimacy of democracy against them.

Rule #6: The Stalin Rule — Stand Together with Anyone Who Will Join You to Disturb, Disrupt, and Diminish the Illiberal Structures.
Even if you share nothing in common beyond a love of democracy and how much you loathe their politics in normal times, you fight side-by-side with them.

Rule #7: Wake Up Every Day Thinking Where Can the Vertical Power Structure Be Exposed, Confronted, and Destabilized.
Each of us and all of us on Team Democracy must wake up every day and ask what can I do to be on the side of restoring faith and confront the fear they use.

These rules aren’t theoretical. They work — because they come from people who have had no choice but to make them work.

So if you’re wondering what you can do, start here. Don’t wait for a hero. Don’t expect someone else to carry the load. You are already on the field.

Print them out. Share them. Live by them.

Because authoritarianism feeds on passivity. And these rules are how we push back.

With resolve, with clarity — and with the hard-earned hope that comes from having seen this before and knowing we can win again.

Trygve Olson is a strategist, pro-democracy fighter and a founding Lincoln Project advisor. He writes the Searching for Hope Substack. Read the original column here.